Joy and grief in the city of expectation

May 31 2003

The harshness of just getting by has replaced the exultation of liberation, writes Anthony Shadid.

Sitting in a battered Toyota, Fadhil Murah wiped his forehead with a soiled rag. Behind him snaked a line of cars, waiting to fill up with petrol. It would be another hour before his turn came. In the withering heat, he spoke glumly of his life and his city, Baghdad.

He has closed his construction supply store, fearing looters. He has sold everything in his house - from his bed to the refrigerator - to support his wife and four children. He has little hope of returning soon to his job at the Ministry of Transportation. For food, he relies on the $7.50 or so a day he makes as a cab driver.

"Ala al-balata," he said, Egyptian slang that means on the floor tiles, as broke as you can be.

"America could solve all the problems, serve all the people in days. It knows what the country needs. It doesn't need the opposition parties from abroad," he said. "People should have food first, then democracy."

From the petrol queues to the frequent blackouts, from a crime wave to newly opened stores bursting with expensive appliances, Baghdad is a city of great expectations and even greater disappointments. ");document.write("

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The seeming invincibility of the US conquest has magnified the failures of the weeks that followed the war.

People are confused that US military forces, assumed to be all-powerful, have delivered little. They are unsettled at the lawlessness that has encouraged religious forces to step into the breach and vigilantes to dole out their own brand of justice. They are bitter at the promises of a better life.

"The price was expensive," said Qassam Alsabti, an artist sipping tea at his Baghdad art gallery. "We all have conflicting feelings - joy and sorrow. I see people happy they are freed from what once hung over them. But when you look at Baghdad, from up high, you see the efforts of 100 years wiped out in a month. We knew we had to pay a price, but not in this ugly way."

Along Karrada Street, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, air-conditioners, ovens and satellite dishes spill into the streets - courtesy of an Iraqi dinar buoyed by a deluge of US dollars and the overnight disappearance of steep customs duties and taxes.

Overlooking the display is a three-room flat where Karima and her family of eight live in envy. "From the war until now, I've earned nothing," she said, a black veil framing a wizened face that belies her 36 years.

She once sold chewing gum in the street, but now fears to go outside. She sold her daughter Fatima's gold necklace for about $100, a few dollars of which went to buy three chairs her neighbours had looted from a school. The day the war began, her 20-year-old son, Ali, went by bus to man an anti-aircraft battery in northern Iraq. Just before the government's collapse, he returned, walking the last stretch through a cratered junkyard of burned tanks.

"Now he sits," she said, tears running down her face. "He looks for work, he finds nothing and he comes back and sits."

Despite the palpable relief at the demise of Saddam Hussein and his repressive rule, it is often said that the country needs a strong leader. Mixed with those words is a belief that a country as powerful as the US could almost certainly rebuild Iraq.

"It would take the Americans five minutes to provide gas, to provide electricity, to provide security," Karima said.

In the mean streets of Mareidy, the toughest neighbourhood in the slum once known as Saddam City, a Russian-made Kalashnikov costs about $140, a Czech-made knock-off $76. The sellers advertise their wares by hoisting them overhead.

"Looters!" someone shouted. The men turned towards the street, firing their rifles into the air. "Every bullet they fire lands on the head of some person," Rasul Jabr, a teacher, said as he watched the scene. "When people buy these weapons, they'll go looting from the people."

A crowd gathered, as often happens in the neighbourhood, and the teacher's words angered some of the men firing their guns.

"I'm not a thief and neither is he," protested Abu Dhiaa, a stocky 25-year-old. "The people have to keep guns because there's no security," he said.

Down the street, tens of thousands of people gathered for Friday prayers at the Mohsin mosque, bringing prayer rugs, from intricate Persian designs to plastic mats.

At the mosque's door was Sheik Kadhim Abadi, cloaked in a white funeral shroud to signify his willingness to die. "They declared that they are occupiers of this country, Iraq, and they are not liberators," he said in his sermon. "We want them to leave soon. This country has many men who can rule and administer it."

To combat the lawlessness, the clergy have asserted their authority, in effect running what has now been renamed Sadr City.

As the chaos set in after Baghdad's fall, men affiliated with the mosques began directing traffic, distributing flour seized from government warehouses and providing stipends to the neediest.

More recently, in a city that was once defiantly secular, they have begun enforcing a moral code. "The enemy has tried to introduce corrupt, foreign thoughts," said Sheik Abadi. He listed them - pornography, Western books and films, cosmetics, compact discs and foreign words.

He ordered followers to form vigilante committees to enforce morality on streets where the only other authority is an occasional detachment of Humvees on patrol. Bottle shops were warned to stop selling alcohol, even to non-Muslims. "We will not warn them again," he said. Muslim women should immediately begin wearing the veil, Sheik Abadi instructed.

"It is time for Islam to emerge and spread its wings," he said.

Mr Murah, still queuing for petrol, worried what is in store for the Americans. "Believe me, if the Americans provide the Iraqis with what they need, the Iraqis will co-operate 100 per cent. The people are in need," he said. "If the Americans do nothing, people will start killing them."

Mr Murah gave the Americans two months to make things better. His wish-list was long - more security, jobs, better salaries, food rations and a government that demonstrates "strength and softness" - the former for the looters, the latter for the people.